


Monstrous to Supernatural

by Guardian_Rex



Series: Nature, Preteternatural, Paranormal, Supernatural [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm back baby, Mulltilingual Danny Fenton, Multilingual Sam Manson, Multilingual Tucker Foley, Space Core! Danny, Suicide mention, The Fentons are a family of Geniuses, The Ghosts have backstories, Transgender Danny Fenton, reseting the world to fix your mistakes, round 2 friends, school shooting mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Rex/pseuds/Guardian_Rex
Summary: Ghosts are a part of life that none of them can get rid of, apparently, so now they just have to figure out how to manage them.  Join the ghostly Trio as they deal with bad wishes, fight a demon (because of course ghosts aren't all there is) and even deal with a dragon or two!  Will they catch any semblance of a break, or will the horrors of the supernatural break them?
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jack Fenton & Jazz Fenton & Maddie Fenton, Danny Fenton & Lunch Lady, Danny Fenton & Sidney Poindexter, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton, Penelope Spectra & Bertrand
Series: Nature, Preteternatural, Paranormal, Supernatural [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592164
Comments: 33
Kudos: 53





	1. Careful What you Wish For

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S BACK! and So am I! I'm only half dead, you see, so you can't be rid of me. I can't promise that I'll update weekly but I do plan to do so at least once a month. Hope this helps you through the virus, through your day or through whatever. now it's time to get spooky!

Green mist, the crackle of the Specter Deflector mk1 resisting the energy in that mist, and then darkness. That was about what Tucker could remember of the fight if you could even call it that. After what felt like forever, he opened his eyes to find he was in his room. Sitting up with a groan, Tucker rubbed his head and took stock of the situation, just like a badass in a movie. “Still in all my clothes from the fight, Sydney isn’t here, Danny and Sam _also_ aren’t here, room’s a mess as usual…” Grabbing his phone, Tucker checked for any panicked texts and saw none. It was just Friday again, Friday morning even. “Alright, so maybe cotton candy wasn’t her power. Ugh, whatever she did it clearly had no effect on me, so that means the Fentons at least know how to make a good protective belt.” Swinging his feet over the edge of the bed Tucker tapped the Specter Deflector and paused. “Oh, wait, will whatever she did affect me if I take off the belt?”

Deciding he didn’t want to find out, Tucker climbed out of bed, brushed his teeth, changed most of his clothes, and checked more of his room. To his dismay, he found that Hunter’s mech was not, in fact, here in his room anymore. “Where the heck could that’ve gone? Mom and Dad didn’t move it last time it was this morning.” He paused, scratching his head. “Did they? Ugh, ok, that’s something to worry about later. If I ask they’ll just get upset that I lost track of it ‘because it’s dangerous’ or whatever.”

Heading downstairs to find his parents in the living room, Dad watching football and Mom knitting something, Tucker called out his usual good mornings and headed into the kitchen for some much-needed bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. Headphones in, the latest Dumpty Humpty songs on, and the smell of food filling the kitchen, Tucker almost didn’t notice the oddness of getting practically no messages from Danny or Sam the whole morning. By now Sam should’ve been complaining about being sick, at the very least.

When he finished up his food, Tucker headed out the door, calling out to his parents, “Gonna go visit Danny, see ya later!” And before they could respond, he was out the door and putting on his helmet. The AI he’d rigged together pointed him toward his board, which he was more than grateful to still have even if Hunter’s suit would be useful, and soon he was in the air. Still, even with no air traffic since the boards weren’t exactly for sale - yet, he needed to talk with Danny about that - he stopped before texting Danny. _He_ couldn’t just phase through a building instead of crashing because he wasn’t looking where he was going after all.

 **Hey Danny, where should we meet up? I’m omw to tell you something wild**.

He guessed, of course, that Danny was at home, so he took off for FentonWorks. Music blaring in his ears, the wind tugging at his body as he did a loop, Tucker considered whether or not he should see if a random girl at the park would find his board cooler than the girls at school. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he blinked a few times, lifting up his helmet to make sure he was reading this right.

**Astroboy: I’m at my uncle’s place, u know that.**

“Alright, the ghost did more than just chuck me back to this morning, apparently. Why would she put Danny at Wes’ place?” Tucker readjusted his helmet and sped off, going a bit faster than before. He took a moment to take in everything below him, seeing no signs of the fight with Hunter that took place outside the library as he passed it. “There should be something there though… the plasma and the lasers _melted_ holes into the walls and street.”

When Tucker reached the Weston home, he was almost certain of what had happened. The ghost had been some sort of wish granter, like a genie, and she’d heard him wish that Danny hadn’t gone into the portal. That explained the lack of Hunter’s marks on the town, without Danny being half-ghost the poacher had no reason to go after him. _Maybe Danny just grew closer to Wes without the ghost stuff in the way?_ Regardless, Tucker went through the awkwardness of greeting Mr. Weston when he answered the door, “Hi there, I’m Tucker Foley. I’m not sure if you remember me but I’m Danny’s friend and he said he was here.”

“Ah yes, Tucker,” the ginger said, taking him in and clearly searching for a memory. “The one he made the hoverboards and the rockets with, right?”

“Yup! That’s me. May I come in?”

“Of course, sure. Shoes at the door and all that.” Tucker kicked off his shoes and Mr. Weston pointed him upstairs.

When Tucker finally found Danny, his good mood at the fact that his best friend didn’t have to worry about fighting ghosts or questioning who and what he was anymore dropped like a lead ball. It looked like a half-assed recreation of Danny’s actual room, desk and posters, and even his Horrorstation all together in one room. It didn’t have the murals of the stars on the ceiling or the walls like in Danny’s real room, but it looked too personalized to be a guest room. Danny looked up from his handheld and waved at him, looking for all the world like something was crushing him. “Hey, Tuck. What’s up?”

“More than I wanted to be, it looks like,” he muttered. Taking a seat on the bed next to Danny - and it was _his_ bed, the exact same mattress - Tucker took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How do I ask this?” His eyes swept over the room, marking where things should be but weren’t, until he landed on Danny again, looking concerned and tense and just as thin as he was before. He wasn’t as pale as he’d been growing but he was still paler than Tucker thought was healthy. “Right, ok. Rip off the bandaid I guess. Say a ghost has, for whatever reason, messed with my memories so that I remember things a whole lot different than they are now.” Danny scowled at the mention of ghosts, the same way Dr. Fenton did. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “What’s happened since August?”

Danny sighed, leaning back on his hands and glaring at the ceiling. “ _Ghosts_. Ghosts have fucking happened since August. Of course, they had to mess with you too, they already messed up everything else.” Danny looked at him again, trying to judge how much of Tucker was the Tucker he knew probably, and Tuck was doing the same. He’d never heard Danny refer to ghosts as a whole with such venom and ice in his voice. It wasn’t right. “After you convinced me how stupid it would be to actually go inside the Ghost Portal, Mom and Dad figured out what was wrong with it - an extra switch inside that would’ve had to be pressed to activate it - and after they fixed it, it _worked_. Jazz had a fucking fit when she realized she was wrong about Mom and Dad being delusional for believing in ghosts.” Danny looked down, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I wish she was right.

“At first it seemed like the portal was working the same way all the other portals worked: a window into another world for Mom and Dad to look through and examine what was happening on the other side. But then something actually came _out_ of the thing.” Danny shuddered and Tucker threw an arm around him. “I remember seeing the ectopus thing for the first time. It was so... w _rong._ Like a messed up hologram that made my eyes hurt to look at it. We all had weapons, thank the stars, but it took a while to get that thing back into the portal.”

“Ok, so it was a door and they didn’t want one of those yet, so they tried unplugging it,” Tucker said when Danny went quiet. He remembered this conversation when Hunter came up. “But it didn’t work that way. Self-sustaining or something, right?”

“A self-sustaining interdimensional intersection that was apparently powered on the other side as much as it was on ours. Stars, Tuck, the freakin Lunch Lady from the 50s came through - or rose up in the cafeteria kitchen, I guess. Either way, when Sam had her menu change thing done and we started a food fight with Dash over it, the ghost lady set the kitchen and cafeteria on fire because we were making a mess of her cafeteria.” Danny scoffed and Tucker winced. “Mom and Dad to the rescue with the Fenton Foamers, since regular extinguishers and stuff wasn’t working. That one got them attention,” he muttered. “The whole town suddenly had their eyes on us, so Mom and Dad did a press conference and then the whole _world_ was paying attention. And then things went _wrong_.”

“Went wrong, how?” He almost didn’t want to know the answer but at the same time, he knew that he should know what happened because of his wish. This was his fault, and he needed to know what.

Danny curled up in a ball under his arm, and his breaths grew a bit shallower. Tucker was certain he wasn’t going to say anything but a moment later, Danny opened his mouth and forced out the words like they stung his mouth to say. “This giant fucking ghost hornet killed Jazz while I was in the counselor’s office and talking with Ms. Spectra about how the media circus was affecting my home life.” He leaned against Tucker, face streaked with tears and chest heaving. “Jazz fucking died of a giant hornet sting and I was talking to a _counselor_. One who fucking ratted my parents out called them neglectful and said they were endangering us at home and CPS shoved me into uncle Walter’s house.”

Tucker knew what being punched in the face felt like, Dash had made sure of it. Now, however, it felt a thousand times worse. Like someone had taken a hot poker right out of a fireplace and shoved it into his chest. “Oh my god.”

* * *

Tucker stayed with Danny as long as Mr. Weston would tolerate, getting the fact that the Mansons were moving out because of the danger in Amity out of him before they played some videogames to get all of this off of their minds. It didn’t, of course, because nothing could get this off of Tucker’s mind, but he had to at least _try_ to get some normalcy out of this for Danny. He got curb stomped by a HellKnight and Danny took on being the Doom Slayer while Tuck stewed.

 _How the hell am I gonna fix this?_ That one thought bounced around in his head, the only thing besides static, and for what felt like forever, it didn’t go anywhere. Then he checked the news app on his phone for once in his life and saw that cotton candy had flooded the swap meet. _I’ll fix it how I messed it up. I just need to find that ghost._

When Wes knocked on the door and told Danny it was time for dinner and heavily implied that Tucker should probably leave, he got up and squeezed Danny in a hug. He got squeezed right back, and it was weird how quickly he’d gotten used to the hum of energy under Danny’s skin that he couldn’t feel anymore. How odd it was to think _this should hurt a bit more_ just because your friend was hugging you as hard as he could, but without superstrength.

On the flyby heading home, Tucker made a detour to the swap meet and started looking, though he wasn’t entirely certain what he was looking for. “Something Alladin-esque, I guess,” he muttered under his breath. Reaching into his jacket pocket thankfully produced the ecto signature tracker he was hoping for, and he followed it to several shards in front of a stand _near_ the center of the cotton candy flood. That was good, at least. The woman putting things away gave Tucker a swell of hope, even if he felt she was probably wearing too much pink. Hopping off the board and removing his helmet he cleared his throat.

“Are you Madam Babazita?”

She stood, turning around to raise a brow at him. Pointing above at the sign that said Madam Babazita's Mystical Oddities. “Who else would I be, kid. Are you here to help with the cotton candy clean up?”

“Actually, I was here to ask about the uh genie that got released around here.” The Babazita turned her full attention to him, and Tucker flinched. There was a sharpness in her eyes and something… off. He didn’t want to make her mad.

“Oh really? You’re here about the djinni?” She looked him up and down and spread her arms out. “I didn’t see you here when her lamp broke.”

“Well, not this version of this morning, no.” He chuckled and cleared his throat again. “I jumped the gun and made a wish without realizing that she could grant them. The only reason I remember all of this, apparently, is because of this.” He raised his shirt to show off the Specter Deflector™. “It blocks out ghostly energy. Is there anything you can tell me about this genie ghost thing that would help me to fix the mess I made?”

Madam Babazita stared at Tucker for several long moments, her beakish nose raised high and her eyes sharp as a hawk’s. After another beat of silence, he opened his mouth to plead a better case than ‘I made a mess and need your help to fix it’ when she held up a hand. “Alright, kid. You look like whatever you did, you regret enough to keep bothering me about it. I’ll tell you about that djinni, but if you get hurt fighting her that’s your fault, not mine.”

“Got it.” She frowned at him and Tucker winced. “I understand, madam.”

Learning of Desiree’s life was a sad story to hear, but finding out that she was compelled to grant any wish she heard was a lifesaver. Sure, it sounded rough having to fulfill everyone else’s desires and not your own, but Tucker needed that kind of guarantee that he could get what he needed so long as he asked for it correctly. Unfortunately, that would have to wait. The sun was going down, and his parents probably didn’t want him out late with ghosts on the loose.

* * *

There were things Tucker could get away with, such as staying out particularly later than he should, ignoring all the vegetables on his plate and generally being less engaged in dinner discussion because his parents weren’t the parents he knew. Not exactly, anyway. A few months could really change someone. One thing he could _not_ get away with, however, was taking a shower in Angela Foley’s household. So, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took off the Specter Deflector™. Nothing happened. Opening his eyes, Tucker found nothing had changed. He could remember everything from how it was _supposed_ to be and he didn’t get any new memories aligning with what Danny had told him. “That’s one mystery solved,” he muttered. That done he got rid of the rest and cleaned, trying to devise a plan.

When he woke up the next morning he _had_ a plan. It was a relatively simple one. “Find Desiree, unwish my wish, and the world is fixed.” He put the belt back on with his new outfit of leather pants, a green sweater and a leather jacket he’d found sitting in his closet. “If she can change reality this much then who knows what else she can do? She probably remembers me shooting at her.”

Even with the wildness of a ghost messing around with people’s desires and a huge, overly public case regarding the town crazies who discovered the afterlife - a thing that Tucker was going to file under ‘think about in more depth later’ - life still went on. There were movies to attend, and people still went to them. This was not the place where Tucker expected to be dealing with a ghost of any sort. And yet, here the tracker pointed him, leading to Paulina… chibified. “I know chibis are supposed to be cute, and on-screen they are, but this? This is horrifying, and I don’t like it. I dunno how anyone else thinks this is cute.” Everyone in the theater was going nuts over Paulina, who steadily grew into a seven-foot-tall chibi version of herself. “Oh wow, the weebs are feeding her power or whatever. That’s just great.”

Riffling through his jacket pocket, Tucker felt the handles for familiar weapons - an ecto-pistol, a tube of lipstick that also shot lasers, the wrist ray he should have on and was now putting on- but none of those guaranteed he’d be able to get the ghost energy _out_ of Paulina. Was this a good idea to act on? “Only one way to find out…” Aim, charge, _fire._ A beam of green struck chibilina in the forehead, dead on, and her supernatural form rippled with a green light. Everyone turned to Tucker, who sucked in a sharp breath, ran for his board, and flew away.

“Ok, I don’t have a weapon on me that can push the ghostly energy out of someone,” he muttered, hoping and praying that Paulina couldn’t also fly. “Good to know. Ugh, where would I find a wish obsessed djinni?” He looked down below him, and up above him even, hoping he’d spot any kind of clue as toa car flew within an inch of Tucker’s face and it’s tailwind dragged him into a spin.

Once he corrected himself in the air and almost caught all of his breath back, Tucker focused on the car zooming around through the air with green energy pulsing through it. “I know we were talking about making flying cars happen, but not like this.” He flew off and after the car, having to push the engine of his board to keep up, and knocked on the driver’s side window. “Uh, hello, this is technically speeding, I do believe.”

“DUUUUDE WHAT THE HELL!?” The blond surfer stereotype screamed, bringing Tucker to question his style and location. There were no beaches in Minnesota.

“Roll down the window!” Tucker pointed at the button, which the guy thankfully hit, and Tucker reached in to grab the wheel and steer the man away from the city. “Alright, so I don’t know how to drive exactly but I’m pretty sure there should be some brakes down there.” No sooner did he say that than the car stopped. It stopped dead in the air, and gravity took hold - a thing it did at inconvenient times. Thankfully, Tuck didn’t have to scream for the man to hit the gas again since this sudden a drop kept him from being able to catch the air needed for screaming. When they started moving forward and up again, Tucker clung to the car door and wheezed in his helmet, shaking his head. “Find. Empty. Parking spot. Think about going down. **_Slowly_**.”

“Oh what, just fuckin _think_ about it going down smoothly and it’ll go down?” Tucker, who was on his hoverboard of all things, was being glared at. By some surfing wanna be. He had no time for this kind of bullshit.

“DID YOU WISH FOR IT TO START FLYING AND IT FLEW?!” the guy flinched and nodded, face screwing up with concentration as he steered the car. Tucker felt free to let go as the vehicle descended toward an empty-ish parking lot and began to slow down. When the car landed and Tucker hovered only a foot off the ground, the man practically kicked his door open and wrapped Tucker in a hug. “Whoa! Ok, ok this is happening.”

“Thank you! Fuck, man, thank you so much! I almost died, flying around in a car!”

“Yeah, I’m looking to find the person who did this so I can stop her.” Tucker gently pushed the man away and started floating up higher, his visor flashing with a status update on his board. It might need maintenance after pulling speeds like that. “You just do your thing, probably avoid using this car for a while. Buh bye.” That said, he sped off into the sky.

* * *

“You’re serious?”

“Would I be telling you this if I wasn’t 100% serious, Sam?” Tucker groaned, sitting on his board on the roof of the school. It was the only place he could think of that’d be abandoned on a Saturday. “I know how to be serious, you know!”

“I dunno,” Sam drawled, “you can be pretty insensitive.”

“Enough to joke about messing up everyone’s lives with a wish?” Tucker glared at his phone. “Sam, Jazz is _dead_ in this timeline! I wouldn’t joke about being the cause of that!”

The line was silent for a long moment, and he checked to make sure he hadn’t been hung up on. Finally, Sam sighed the crackle of it in the receiver matching the static in his head when he learned about that little tidbit. “Fine. Ok, let’s pretend I believe you. Why do you want _my_ help instead of Danny’s?”

“Pardon?”

“Danny’s the one with access codes to all the weapons his folks have for fighting ghosts, not me. Why are you telling _me_ this instead of Danny?”

“First of all, I have the weapons I need to fight her if it comes to that, which gods I hope it doesn’t.” With all the chaos she was causing, Tucker didn’t want to get into an actual fight with Desiree. He had a feeling Danny wouldn’t have won that fight with his powers either. “Second of all: gee Sam, I wonder why I didn’t tell Danny that I essentially got his sister killed with a hasty wish?” The line was silent, and Tucker took a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry, if I sound harsh or anything I just. You’re the one who comes up with most of our winning ideas, and I don’t wanna hurt Danny any more than I already have. All I need to do is find Desiree and make a wish. Any ideas on where she might be?”

“Well, she might be at a place where people typically go to make wishes. Everyone has a desire to ask for pretty much all day but a wishing well or fountain or something would probably do the trick.” There was a loud clacking of keys and Tucker winced.

“You need to ease up on that poor keyboard.”

“It’ll be fine. There’s a wishing fountain around the middle of Magnus park. Heck, toss a coin in and make a wish of your own, that might get her attention.”

Why hadn’t he thought of that? “Thanks, Sam, you’re the best.”

“You know I am. And Tucker? Be safe, or as safe as you can be.”

“Safe as anyone can be going after a djinni, yeah. I will be.” Tucker nodded and hung up, slipping on his helmet. Putting in the directions for the Magnus park fountain through his PDA, Tucker took off into the sky and hoped that things went even a bit ok.

* * *

Finding Walter Weston as he wished for a million bucks and peridot green mist swirled around him like a caress as a familiar voice spoke was not what Tucker would call ok. Still, he took the opportunity to stop another stupid wish from getting twisted - a million bucks could be quite a few deer or even just that much money crushing him under its weight. Slowing down enough to not break anything, Tucker swerved, yanking Mr. Weston up out of the smoke, and dropped him off a few meters away. Looking up, Tucker saw an infuriated Desiree glaring down at him and shouting in a language he didn’t understand.

That was fine though. He didn’t need to understand her just yet. She understood wishes in English just fine, clearly. “I wish that I hadn’t interrupted your conversation with Danny!” The djinni stared at him, eyes bright red with obvious fury, but her hands glimmer pink and green, and the mist wrapped around him again.

“ ** _So you have wished it_** , **_so shall it be!”_**


	2. Freedom and Foreboding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny had just finished dealing with one problem when a sort of old problem reared it's ugly head and made itself a priority. For once, he may have to deal with a supernatural entity the same way any Fenton traditionally would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will put the warning here because it only makes sense to me: there will be mentions of school shooting in this chapter, mentions or at least hints at suicide. If you want to skip over that then when Sydney says Spectra's name skip to “I’m looking her up..."

“Uh, well, I know a way I can help.” Danny smiled, rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry for making that wish without asking your permission but I have a feeling you’ll like this one.”

“ _ I’m certain. _ ” Desiree sighed and turned to fly away, but Danny couldn’t just let her go like that. People made wishes haphazardly all the time, and interpretation was a horrible thing to mix magick into.

“I wish that you were free of the curse that was laid on you.” She froze, turning to stare at him with wide red eyes. Pink and green light gathered around her fingertips and she raised her hands.

“ **_So you have wished it… so shall it be._ ** ” A cloud of smoke enveloped her like a cocoon, and Danny squinted into it. A wave of force exploded from the cloud and all the booths shook with the energy released, Danny being knocked to the ground. When he looked up, Desiree was blue-skinned, her silver armbands violet and her dress a dark green. Eyes like stars looked down upon her new form, bottom half still a cloud of wispy mist, and she slowly began to smile and laugh. “ _ I’m… free? I’m free! Thank you, Danny, thank you so much!” _ She flicked her hand, pink and blue ripples of light fixing up the cotton candy explosion and even setting Danny on his feet properly. “ _ I had thought I’d never be free of that wretched curse! _ ”

“No problem! Just, if you can avoid it, please don’t go hurting anyone?” She arched a brow at him and Danny winced. “I mean, I’m kind of trying to keep everyone, ghosts and humans alike, safe in my town, you know?”

“ _ I cannot promise not to hurt  _ **_anyone_ ** _ but I won’t be staying in this Realm for long. _ ” Desiree smiled, a sharp and dangerous baring of teeth and a gaze fixed on something far beyond them that Danny felt pity for. “ _ After all, I have to find the fool who did this to me and show him how it feels. And then, I’ll return to my own realm, and a queendom of my own shall be mine! _ ” She laughed, lights and swirls of colors that his brain had no way of making sense of dancing around her, and throughout the park. After a moment, she sighed and patted his head. “ _ Thank you, Danny. Stay safe. _ ” And in a swirl of pink that might not have actually been pink, she was gone.

Danny took a moment to feel all warm and tingly inside about how he helped someone so easily, and then he let everything slide past him and through him, flying into the ground and then back up under the table. The cold of his ghost curled back up into a ball somewhere within him and his skin regained its color and warmth, the world settling back into a thin extreme indigo lense. He crawled out from under the table cloth and found Tucker, staring at where he had been, and tackled him. They tumbled to the ground with a yelp from Tucker and Danny laughed, rolling away from the zap of the belt. “ _ Dude _ , Desiree is a Jinni! I wished for a dick and now I have magickally transitioned.”

“Don’t let my being crushed into the ground by you fool ya, I’m genuinely overjoyed for you about that.” Tucker lifted his head and laughed, deactivating the Specter Deflector before dragging Danny into a hug in the grass. The hug lasted longer than he felt this deserved, even if he was over the moon about it. It was also tighter than it should be, and Tucker’s gold was streaked with all kinds of wild blurples, marshons and even some grick.

“Dude, are you alright?” Danny patted Tucker’s back when he just squeezed tighter and sighed. “Ok. We can do this, but like, we’re gonna get stepped on.” Tucker relented, finally, and they got up, dusting the dirt and grass from their clothes before Danny was hugged, again. “Tuck?”

“I… we need to talk, with the others too.” Well, this promised to be interesting at least. A good distraction from what happened before, hopefully.

* * *

It was not, in fact, a good distraction from the shapeshifter that had essentially murdered him (Sam was not the cause, no matter what she probably thought, and he needed to tell her that at some point, she deserved to hear it). No, instead Danny, Sydney and through the skype call Sam listened to Tucker tell them about how he’d wished that Danny hadn’t gone into the portal and apparently all hell broke loose from that. On one hand, it was almost freeing to know that even if Danny hadn’t caved to peer pressure like an idiot, the portal still would’ve been wrong when it turned on. It  _ ached _ to know that if he hadn’t died in there, his sister would’ve died out here.

But the burning in Danny’s soul was nothing, apparently, compared to Sydney. “Wait, Tucker, did you say, Spectra? As in  **Penelope Spectra?”** Oh boy, Danny knew that tone and he didn’t like it.

“Yes…” Tucker backed up a bit, while Danny shifted to stand in front of him, hand in his pocket. “She’s the guidance counselor at Casp-”

Sydney glitched, glitched hard. His features stretched, twisted, overlapped before settling on the image of a corpse, blood dripping from his mouth and the back of his skull as he hissed fury that made the skype call lag and crackle with static. “ **Penelope Spectra should be dead like the rest of us! I- show me a picture of her.** **_Now!”_ **

“Ok, ok,” Tucker said, pulling up a picture from the school’s website. “There’s surely plenty of people with that name, Sydney, no need to freak out.”

Except, he did. When they pulled up the image of a ginger woman with hair done up in what looked almost like horns and a red business suit, the air around Sydney shone with green and his eyes were pits of red light. “ **THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! NO ONE CAN SURVIVE A BULLET TO THE HEAD LIKE THAT! I SURE AS HELL DIDN’T AND NEITHER DID ANY OF THE OTHER BULLIES LIKE HER!** ”

Tucker, slowly, exited the browser and reactivated his Specter Deflector™ while Danny gently tugged Sydney back from the screen. It stung, the dark reddish colors radiating off Sydney like heat, anger that wasn’t his own boiling in his chest. Danny took a slow, deep breath, and when he breathed out he pushed the anger out of him with it. “Breathe with me, Syd. Can you do that?”

“ **I’m** **_dead_ ** **buster.** ”

“Yeah, and you don’t need to breathe, but  _ can _ you?” The glitching slowed ever so slightly, and Danny brought his energy as close to the surface as he could while still human. “In and out, c’mon. In,” the heat receded, concentrated, burned darker for it. “Out.” It dissipated in waves, ripples of static on his screens and Tucker grabbed the laptop to keep the current from ruining it. They did that, breathing, for a while until Sydney looked less like a floating corpse and more like a monochrome translucent image. He rubbed his arms and looked away while Danny turned to lock eyes with Tucker. Tucker was busily typing away on the laptop now that nothing was interfering with the wifi signal. “Tuck?”

“It’s a good thing Sydney stays away from the school,” he muttered, Sam snorting over the line. “Is it possible for an unagitated ghost to have some color and look like a human being?”

“Uh, not that  _ I _ know about.” Danny glanced at Sydney and gave him a pat on the back. “Syd?”

“I-I don’t know… I’ve been a bit stuck, on the other side you know?” Sydney was becoming fuzzier at the edges and Danny sighed when he realized the other boy was invisible. “Maybe someone else would know.”

“Right,” Tucker drawled. “Syd, do you wanna come with us to go ask Agatha about this? If we’re dealing with a well-hidden ghost, then I wanna make sure you two are on top of your game. A hearty meal, or I guess a ghouly meal, is essential for any fight.”

Sydney at least flickered back into something easier on the eyes if not fully there, and he chuckled. “Uh, maybe? Who’s Agatha?”

“Agatha Reece,” Sam said over the call, pausing to cough into her arm. “She’s the ghost of a lunch lady at Casper.” Sydney’s white eyes went wider than humanly possible, a touch of sepia seeping into his greyscale.

“Ah, you know what, I think I’ll just head out and go see some sights. I’m sure you two don’t need me to help you grab a snack.” With that, Sydney flew through Tucker’s ceiling, and Danny leaned back in his chair, a heavy sigh on his lips. It felt like a lot of pressure just rose off of his chest, though there another pressure entirely coming from his swirling thoughts.

“It’s a damn good thing I got Sydney out of the school before he actually  _ saw _ Dash doing the shit I ranted to him about.” They all laughed at that, and Danny felt a bit lighter still. “Though, I imagine school’d be pretty interesting without him.”

“Yeah, we could actually walk around without worrying about getting shoved into a locker.” Tucker stretched his limbs out, and Danny felt an ache in his joints just at the reminder. “What a stereotype.”

“As much as I’m glad to cheer on the virtues of Jazz’s therapy sessions with Sydney,” Sam cut in with a shaky, light laugh of her own. “We still need to figure this Spectra thing out.”

“I’m looking her up and while she’s not stupid enough to use the same name over and over again, her picture is sorta  _ everywhere _ over the past five decades,” Tucker muttered. Danny got up and rested his chin on Tucker’s shoulder, taking in the image of a barely, if at all, changing face go throughout the ages back to the 50s. “Cause if she’s a ghost, she’s gotta be using a  _ lot _ of energy to keep looking like that.”

“That’s  _ if _ she’s a ghost,” Sam said. There was a long moment of quiet after that, and Sam went off-screen, grabbing some book that looked older than Spectra. “Guys, you just said a Jinni flew off to get revenge on a ghost, how do we know there aren’t  _ other _ things out there.”

“Mom and Dad  _ have _ been to other places before…” Danny felt his hand slipping out of reality as the realization hit him like a football to the face. “They’ve made so many windows to other places and then if a drone could survive going in, they went in, and then Jazz and I went in with them. Holy shit, what if there was stuff in there we just couldn’t see?”

“What did Sydney and Agatha call the other side?” Sam sniffled. “The Infinite Realms? There’s probably a whole lot of things that Spectra could be.”

“Based on this track record of depression, she’s either a shitty psychologist who doesn’t get how the human mind works, or she’s fucking up people’s lives on purpose.” Tucker shifted so Danny could see the news article that he was looking at better. “That’s a lot of people who went from average mental states to killing themselves, or going into self-isolation.”

“Maybe she likes ruining people’s lives,” Sam muttered. “There’s plenty of legends and myths about things that like to do that. Danny, have your parents made anything that might help reveal a supernatural being hiding as a human?”

“I… maybe? I’ll have to check, I haven’t been paying attention to their weapons or anything lately.” He had been actively avoiding anything offensive that his parents made besides the plasma rifle he had. He wasn’t looking to have things go off on him, after all. “Tuck, you check with Agatha about what Spectra might be and I’ll head home, see what Mom and Dad have worked on. Sam, you see if you can find anything on, I dunno, emotional vampires or straight-up assholes who love ruining lives in folklore.”

“Can do, captain, but there’s a lot of the latter in every kind of story.” Sam offered a wave before ending the call and Danny sighed, sagging in his chair.

“Look at you, takin charge like a hero.” Tucker hugged him again, and Danny leaned into his side.

“Yeah. Let’s hope I can keep being a hero.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! I got this out before the end of the month, i'm proud of myself for that. I hope you all enjoyed the chapter, even if it does include some rather heavy topics. Thoughts, Feelings and Sacrifices down in the comment section below, and I hope you all havea healthy, happy day


	3. Artifacts and Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny takes a look in the weapons vault for something useful, Tucker gets some info, and Sam has a moral debate in her head instead of out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM NOT, IN FACT, DEAD! So like, welcome back lovely readers! We're getting close! Close to what? What I've decided should've been the end of the previous installment in the series, as the Desiree cliffhanger was agonizing yes, it was also not the right spot to end that story on. But before we get to that, we have some investigating to do! Enjoy!

To say that the situation between Danny and his parents was tense would be to say that space was a little dark and a touch chilly. Ending an argument by passing out was dramatic, yes, but not conducive to following that argument up with maybe something calmer, more reasoned out. On one hand, Danny was never going to be reasonable about the idea of committing genocide on the dead, a feat he was almost entirely certain was impossible and yet even if it  _ was _ possible, it would be akin to setting off all the nukes on Earth at once. It was a horrible idea, and if he thought about it any further Danny knew he was going to start causing things to float and go icy cold and dark. He may have accidentally frozen part of his room when he got home from the hospital.

So, instead of asking his parents ‘hey Mom and Dad, have you made any tools or weapons to expose a shapeshifting ghost?’ like he would’ve in the case of a slightly less tense relationship with his parents (he could  _ see _ the threads that bound him to them, and they were strained, thinner than before, and that frightened him), Danny had to check himself. Which meant going into the kitchen and heading through the door, down the stairs and ignoring the second flight of stairs that’d lead to the lab (to the portal, to his Death, to his Undeath, to all the hurt he’d ever experienced compounded over itself all at once). He instead kept going down a hallway, one that held two doors, both sealed up. One was the Cursed Artifacts vault, and it didn’t surprise Danny that he could see light pulsing at the edges of the door, calling out to him in a way that he could see but not hear and yet  _ knew _ was a cry all the same.

“I bet there’re dolls in there. Not even because they’re actually cursed but because they  _ think _ they are.” Instead of finding out how cursed anything in there actually was, Danny turned to the other door, opening it up and looking out across rows and shelves of weapons. The walls were honeycombed with drawers like file cabinets. The ones that were open were typically the more experimental ones, while the rest were connected to the Portal Pockets so that they could be summoned on the fly whenever needed. Checking over the experimental shelves, Danny tapped his fingers against his arms and legs, trying not to think too hard about any of these things being used against him.

“The Fenton Ghost Gloves,” Danny read from the notecard written in his mother’s patient script. “When activated the gloves release a steady current of metaphysical energy (hereby referred to as ecto energy) across their surface, facilitating tactile interaction with a ghost regardless of the ghost’s selective tangibility. Concept derived from the Specter Deflector™ as suggested by Tucker Sazad Foley.” He put the card back and sighed. “Not what I needed but good to know about. Maybe Tuck and I can make some of these of our own - if it’s in the experimental phase then it’s fitted to Dad.”

Danny walked over to the Next New Thing. He groaned, running a hand through his hair and tugging on the curls. “Looks like we need a new mixer. That was  _ mine! _ Just cause Mom can’t make anything but cookies or fudge doesn’t mean that they should just. Argh.” He huffed and then picked up the card for whatever his precious mixer had been sacrificed to make. “The Fenton Ghost Peeler. Oh, wow, they couldn’t get a potato peeler for this one? Capable of… stripping a ghost layer by layer, peeling them like an onion, so as to weaken it for capture or for examination post-capture. Yikes.” Setting down the card, he picked it up and examined the buttons, keeping the obvious business end away from his face. “That sounds painful, probably even sadistic, but I guess this is what I’m after.” He pocketed it, placing it not with standard weapon storage but his own private little pocket that only he had access to outside of emergencies.

Making sure the door was locked, Danny walked to the stairs and ignored the plethora of colors radiating from the tiny seams of the Artifacts vault, and the star-like pull tugging him downward, deeper, toward a world still unseen. He had this world to worry about, and the next one could wait.

* * *

Flying his way to Agatha’s soup kitchen would’ve been faster than using his skateboard but if Hunter had taught him anything, being subtle could be a life or death thing. With that shapeshifter on the loose, Tucker felt being subtle was the right path to go down while alone. Tucker moved with an ear and both eyes open for trouble, which he felt like he was going to get. When he got within 2 blocks of the kitchen, however, that feeling vanished, replaced with an acute awareness of how hungry he was and how little ectoplasmic food Danny had eaten. That surety that he was being watched and hunted faded away and Tucker stopped, looking around. “Note to self, shifter won’t approach Agatha’s territory.”

When he actually got there, the volunteer at the door was one of the same ones who had to be convinced to let Agatha in without calling the Fentons. She had dark skin, bright brown eyes, and long curly hair done up in a bun. She smiled when she saw him, waving. “Hi, there! Tucker, right? You were one of the kids that brought Aggie to us?”

“Yeah, though most people call me TF for Too Fine.” He shot her a pair of finger guns with a grin and a wink, not even flinching when she laughed at it all. He was hardly serious about that right now, and even if he were everything took time.

“Kid, I’m 21. That’d be the creepiest thing under the sun for me to call you.” Tucker laughed with her then and they shook their heads together. “What can I do for ya?”

“I uh need to speak with Ms. Reece. If she’s available.” Tucker knew he wasn’t Danny and that Agatha had no explicit reason to talk to him, but he hoped that his being best friends with the kids who’d gotten her into this place would be enough. He wasn’t a researcher on Sam’s level but he knew she’d need some description beyond ‘malicious supernatural entity’ to figure out what Spectra was.

Daisy - and that was her name, he remembered now - blinked and shrugged before patting Tucker on the shoulder and leading him over toward a door marked Staff Only. “You wait here and I’ll see if Aggie can meet with you.” Tucker nodded and leaned against a wall, scrolling through his phone and looking over Spectra’s staff profile again. His eyes narrowed at the mention of an assistant, wondering what a school counselor needed with an assistant.

Before he could look into this Bertrand Baxter, however, a white holographic head poked through the door and Tucker jumped to attention, Wrist Ray™ aimed and charging. He took a deep breath, put away the weapon and offered a shaky smile at Agatha, who managed a sheepish one herself. “Sorry about that, child. I’ve just been in the habit of it and everyone round here has gotten used to me doing that. How are ya deary?”

“Hello, Ms. Reece,” Tucker said with a wave. “I’ve been better. And you?”

“Oh, I’m doing well! I just wish I could do more.” She frowned. White rippling edges began to tint green. “So many people are out there just like these dears, who can’t get a good meal.”

Tucker frowned as his brain worked double-time to figure something out. He didn’t want Agatha to grow unstable and dangerous because she realized the limitations of being in one place. What did he learn by proxy as Danny’s best friend?  _ Ghosts can do things to satisfy their desires in efficient ways on scales grand enough to terrify. They curse objects to  _ _ spread their malicious machinations beyond their haunts _ _ do things they normally can’t. They- _ “What if… you made lunch boxes that always restored themselves? Always have a healthy meal inside of them? Then you can give those out to people all over as fast as you can make em, and feed just about everyone.” Tucker had no clue if she could even  _ do _ that but he dearly hoped so. Not only because he was worried about his own immediate safety - though he was - but also because if she  _ could _ do that and managed it, then that would be unbelievably great for pretty much everyone in the world. He may not have Sam’s grand, overarching passionate goals as he was very much grounded in the real world not the ideal one, but ghost powers made  _ everything _ possible.

In any case, Agatha stopped turning green. Instead, for a moment, Agatha didn’t look like a ghost the way Tucker knew them to look. Her skin was a warm brown, her uniform pink and white with thick yellow rubber gloves and her eyes were full of life in a way that Tucker hadn’t ever seen in her or Sydney.

For a moment, Tucker got a clear glimpse of what Agatha was like when she was alive.

She flickered back to that holographic quality and beamed at him. “Oh, Tucker! That’s a wonderful idea! I’ll get to work on that in my Cafeteria! But you came for more than solving my problems, didn’t you?”

“I’m happy to help, Ms. Reece, but I  _ did _ need to ask you about someone.” Tucker cleared his throat and braced himself. “Do you know about Penelope Spectra?”

Agatha’s hair ignited, eyes turned into red pits of fury and her body shone lime green.  **“What bout that ishka?** ” Oh, Tucker almost disliked that icy cold tone as much as he did the sound of Agatha’s fiery and immediate rage. 

“She isn’t human, but she  _ is _ back at Casper high and Danny, Sam and I need to know what she is to get rid of her.”

“ **Hod that filthy, joy suckin-** ” Agatha went on a list of what Tucker could only say were old Minnesotan Not Swears. He was impressed that she was refraining from swearing up a storm with how long she went on, but a lack of lungs made ranting names about someone pretty easy, he guessed. “ **-get back without my notice?** ”

“You were a touch busy with us,” Tucker soothed. “Do you know what she is?”

Agatha took a breath and closed her eyes, the fire that was her hair snapping around waspishly. When she opened them they were focused on Tucker like a microscope. “The Infinite Realms are called that cause they’re endless and infinite. Every kind of world you can imagine and all the ones you can’t exist, and some of theirs end up here.  **Spectra** ’s from what ya call the Abyss. The Ocean of Dark.” Agatha shuddered. 

“ **Penelope Spectra is a rippling, inky darkness that pulls your greatest fear, your greatest sorrow, the darkest worst thing within you that you resist day after day, or even that you don’t up to the surface. She makes you face everything you think is wrong with you, even the tiniest flaw in the back of your head that you know better about yourself, and spits it back at you with all the force of a wave crashing down and drowning you in misery and self-doubt. And then she feeds on it like a festering parasite.”** Agatha’s face twisted up in disgust. “ **She is suffering and fear and misery, and she wreaks it upon her victims to feed herself.”**

“That’s… quite the description.” Tucker didn’t dare take his phone out to take notes just yet, all too sure that’d look like disrespect to the ghost.

“That  **Ishka** got  **me and half of the school killed! I’m bein rather generous in how I call her.”**

“Understood.” Tucker nodded and took a step back. “Thank you for your help, ma’am.”

“And thank you kindly for the idea, Tucker. Stay safe and aim well.”

* * *

“Damn, that’s a description,” Sam muttered, pages flipping in her hands and herbal tea resting half drank next to her. She was slowly recovering from both a bug that seemed to be going around and the drain from her spell. Still, she had a feeling that unless she found some powerful artifact straight from the Infinite Realms it was back to her martial arts and Fenton Weapons for all defenses. Fine against a meathed like Dash, but not so fine when it came to dealing with an emotional vampire.

“It sounds to me like she blames Spectra for what Sydney did,” Danny said, “Which is probably something Sydney might need to hear. After all, if Spectra’s track record is something to go off of then…”

“Let’s save  _ that _ for later, please and thanks.” Sam sighed. “I don’t need to think about that right now. What I  _ do _ need to think about is… aha! Alright, thanks to a bunch of internet searches and checking through a few translated books, I think I have an idea of what Spectra is.” She finished her cup of tea and made a face at the strong taste. Regardless, it should help. “Agatha said something about the Dark Ocean, right?”

“Yup.”

“So, while she could be a few things I think the closest match is a Fomorian from Irish myth. Seafarers from the Middle East that came to Ireland centuries before Tuatha Dé Danann arrived there. The Tuatha De Danann are gods,” she answered before Tucker could finish asking. “With our admittedly limited knowledge on ghosts, I’d say that a group of monstrous entities from a dark ocean finding their way here through a portal of some sort and becoming part of legends makes sense.” Sam sighed, leaning back against her wall of fluffy lavender pillows. “If the Infinite Realms are really that and beings from other realms can just make a portal here whenever they feel like it, how many myths, legends, and religions can be traced back to something from another realm hopping over to Earth?”

No one said anything for the longest moment and Sam sneezed into a tissue. Tucker cleared his throat and pushed through a near palpable wall of awkwardness that Sam had established. “What kind of things do the myths say we need in order to hurt her?”

“Well, fighting a Fomorian effectively sort of requires you to use a magickal weapon of some sort. I’m pretty sure that magick is just ectoplasmic energy at this point, so we’re good there.”

“Now we just need an excuse for me to shoot a staff member with an experimental weapon made by the town crazies.” Danny huffed and Sam sucked her teeth at that. How would they corner her without anyone stopping them? Finding her at night sounded like a horrible idea if she was from the Dark Ocean, and dealing with her during the day likely meant at lunch, which would mean the entire school would be available for her to use against them.

Tucker grinned on her screen and puffed out his chest. “Well, that part’s actually covered by Spectra’s own bullshit planning. She has an assistant registered with the school, and you’d think someone with such great planning skills wouldn’t have an assistant with living family members come with her to the school where his grandson goes to.” Sam’s eyes widened and she leaned forward as Tucker sent a link and a picture of a man captioned as Bertrand Baxter. “Yes,  _ that _ Baxter.”

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered. “All we need to do is get Dash to expose his grandfather as dead and we’d have Spectra dead to rights as either an accomplice in a haunting that’s been hurting the school at the very least. If we can line up the shot right we-” Sam cut herself off with a violent fit of coughing and sneezing and leaned away from the screen with the force of it all. Once she was done attempting to cough up her entire lung, Sam wiped her face with a fresh tissue. “Ugh, I guess I mean if  _ you _ can line up the shot right. I feel utterly useless like this.”

“Well, if it’s alright I may be able to help with that.” Sam didn’t have the energy to jump like her body wanted to, but she did turn quickly to see Sydney Poindexter floating sheepishly in front of her, head turned to look off into the nearest corner. “I uh. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, and after you and Danny showed that he can heal people with a little effort, and after a little talk with Jazz, I thought maybe. Maybe I can try? I have more energy to spare, at the very least.”

For a second Sam considered telling Sydney to leave. After all, he’d flat out admitted to what the rumors about him had stated: he snapped and shot up the school. That was inexcusable. And yet, a soul-sucking misery demon looking to feed on every ounce of negative emotion that she could had been an influence, hell might’ve even been the whole driving force. And Sydney had basically been put through torture before  _ and _ after. Part of her felt that he should be pushed away, shoved in a thermos and returned to the Realms and the other remembered that Agatha, one of his victims, blamed  _ Spectra _ for what happened to him. Sam would’ve let this moral debate in her head go on forever if she could, really. 

But then her lungs had another fit and she decided that pragmatism won out here. So she held out her hand and sniffed when she could. “Go ahead, not like this can get any worse.”

Sydney beamed, his form sliding further into focus and opacity, and he took her hand. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he concentrated, so much like Danny she wanted to laugh. But then she felt how different from Danny he was. Danny’s energy was  **vast light bright protection** and Sydney felt more  **gentle cautious guilt warm soft** in a way that Sam was hard-pressed to define. But then that warmth spread slowly and steadily through her body and it was like a fever but five times as intense. And then the energy cooled, stealing away the extra heat to soothe her, and Sam felt bone tired. Her sinuses were cleared and all that, she could almost certainly tell, but she was so  _ tired _ . “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I guess I was able to knock out your flu but you’ll need your own energy to handle any sort of restoration?”

“Let Sam rest a couple days, Syd,” Tucker said at the edges of her awareness. Sydney pulled her up in her bed and her protests died on her lips as warm comfy blankets were tucked around her. “We’ll take on the shadow lady when we’re all at 100 percent.”

“Fine, I’ll rest, but I want a new weapon to compensate.” With that demand gotten out, darkness overtook Sam and the sound of Tucker instructing Sydney on how to turn off her laptop correctly faded out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading, if you enjoyed it please do share this around on tumblr or twitter or wherever you share things you ennjoy! Have a wonderful day, stay safe, stay indoors, and try not to go ghost yourself!


	4. Ghosts and Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz was struggling to process the weird things going on in her life. While she was far more interested in psychology than parapsychology, she /did/ offer a ghost a bit of therapy now and then and he seemed to be doing better for it. That was all the ghostly interaction she really needed.
> 
> the giant hornet in school apparently disagrees with her on that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS WEDNESDAY MY DUDES! how ya doin it's ya boi here with more of that lovely ghostly weirdness, hope y'all enjoy it and that you stay safe inside

It truly amazed Jazz what the mind could conjure up during stressful events. For instance, it occurred to her right this very second how odd it had been to cool even slightly down from the argument days before over ghosts with her parents only for the ghost of the infamous Sydney Poindexter to show up in the library seeking comfort and a safe person to vent to. The topic of Sydney’s guilt had been hard to stay objective about, but between his clear and honest regret, his admitted decades of hell in a replica of Casper in the Infinite Realms (and wow, she shouldn’t be surprised that ghosts had a name for the world they manifest in but there she was) and the fact that Danny had befriended him led her to feel Sydney was, while not at all justified in what he’d done, not as bad a person as he’d been making himself out to be. When she asked questions he responded much more clearly than when he spoke unprompted, she’d noted, and so she’d asked right away if there was even one person he could remember who didn’t hurt him. The green and sepia bleeding into his form nearly vanished as his older brother, his little sister, and the school nurse came to mind.

His brother hardly cared about the things that he was being bullied over, doing his best to keep Sydney looking toward the future and making amazing things to lift his spirits. Apparently, he was a genius like Tucker and Danny, a compliment that made Jazz smile at the time. His little sister didn’t know enough to really understand it all but she was unerringly sweet and a source of sunshine that he never ever mentioned at school. The nurse, however, had been the brightest of those three lights in the dark for him, as the nurse wasn’t family and had no pre-established reason to be nice to and patch up the gross, nerdy queer kid that everyone else had shown nothing but contempt for. She did it anyway though, and he’d aspired to be a nurse like her one day. This aspiration led to more bullying, of course, but Jazz suggested he try learning how to heal people up the same way that nurse had him, and a look of realization and hope crossed his face before he hugged her, waved, and flew off. That had been a very good ghostly encounter.

The giant hornet casting a sinister green glow over the hallways as a long, slimy black tongue curled around her entire skull and sharp mandibles the size of said skull extended to their most open was distinctly not. Jazz would never look at bugs the same way again. Before she could even manage to get a scream out of her though, the whining charge of one of her parents’ weapons filled her ears and the hornet jerked back with a sound that could’ve been pain, could’ve been fury, and mixed the kind of clicking hissing one expects from a bug with a very human voice. There was a burn mark on its center dripping ectoplasm that smelled  _ awful _ , and it turned big black eyes to the same ghost boy she’d seen before. But now Jazz  _ knew _ he was dangerous because that was a Fenton Plasma Rifle in his hands and his eyes were torches, hair flicking between cloudy wisps and crackling flames. “ **Did someone call for an exterminator?** "

“Oh, you think you’re funny!” The fucking hornet said, starling Jazz into motion - backing away slowly so as to not draw its attention. It flew like a blur at the boy, stinger cutting a gash in his suit and up his arm that leaked a thick green fluid and the rest of it’s lower half crashed into him with enough force to slam the boy into a few lockers with a bang. “Swat  _ this _ , big boy.”

“ **Buzz off** ,” the boy growled and the lights flared up brighter around them. He swung the rifle at the bug and the green ectoplasm shone a blinding white as it fired, burning a hole straight through the hornet and drilling it through the wall between the school and its yard. The boy flew after it and Jazz took a deep breath. There were ghosts fighting in her school, one with her parents’ weaponry. That one  _ had _ saved her though and  _ Jazz _ also had Fenton weaponry on her. She rushed outside to help, determined to keep her savior from being skewered by a hornet.

Jazz poked her head out from the hole that the boy had made and froze. He was smacked out of the air by one of the long hairy legs of the hornet and into a tree and his head cracked loudly against bark. As he slid down his body was enveloped in light that retreated inward to his center and left behind Black hair, tan skin, a nyan cat hoodie- “Danny?”

Her whisper went unnoticed in the face of a green ray piercing the hornet’s left wing. Bleeding ectoplasm in three places, it curled in on itself into a mass of green goop that dove into the ground and everything was still. Danny looked around with bright green eyes as he clutched his head, before growling and punching the tree. He stood up slowly, closed his eyes and grew difficult to look at, to even see as the light within a foot of him grew intense like a halo. He let out a breath and slumped against Tucker when the other boy made it to him, checking him over.

Jazz stepped back away from the hole and took deep, shaky breaths.  _ My brother is a ghost. _ That thought played over and over in her head even as a teacher gently guided her to her feet (when had she sat down among the debris?) and to the nurse’s office. It was only when Danny appeared in the nurse’s office, wrapping her up tight in a hug and rambling a mile a minute to ask if she was ok in every way he possibly could that her brain shifted focus even slightly.

“Well, I didn’t get stung. Just licked by a dad sized hornet and saved by a ghostly teenager.” She hugged Danny back just as tightly, and tears began to flow as his argument to their parents before he blacked out in the hospital bed came back to mind.  _ If the portal accident had killed me, would you have comforted your child or attacked the ghost in your lab? _ Danny’s arms went slack for a moment but Jazz clung tight to him. “I just. I just need a moment. Please?”

Instead of pulling away and cracking jokes about gross sibling feelings her blessed baby brother hugged her back again and nodded into her neck. “Of course, Jazz.”

“I swear to every star that listens,” Danny said behind his bedroom door where Jazz really shouldn’t be listening in. “Next I see of that smart-mouthed, rancid piece of protoplasmic  _ filth _ I’m going to turn him into a  **smear** and burn him.”  _ That _ certainly sounded more like Dad than Danny.

“At least save me a little bit to beat up,” Sam’s voice called through the speakers of his newly upgraded laptop. “I  _ just _ commissioned your Mom for a ghost fighting melee weapon  _ and _ Sydney’s healing me up pretty fast.” So Sydney knew about all of this.

“There’ll be some of Spectra left to beat up with that once the Peeler has finished its work.”  _ What?! _ “Probably. Maybe. It’s made to weaken the target not kill them.”

The scoff she heard was definitely Tucker and definitely in the room. “Yeah, you’ll leave a scrap of shadow that none of us can distinguish from our  _ own _ shadows, that’s something Sam can beat up.”  _ Shadows? _ “I think the ectoplasm is enhancing your emotional response.”

“You’re right Tuck, if someone threatened Jazz’s life normally I  _ wouldn’t _ try to shoot them into a pile of goo. I’d only beat them up with the gun.” Jazz would normally admonish such a violent reaction, and aloud she might if she was in there and not eavesdropping. But truly, if someone hurt Danny they’d find out what a 1st degree blackbelt can do to them.

“I think Sam will be good to go either tomorrow or the day after.” Sydney’s voice crackled over the speakers like static. “I think your healing powers mesh better with living beings than mine can since you’re halfa human.”

Danny sighed and Jazz moved back into her room, sitting down to process. She pulled out her notebook and set it on her desk, mechanical pencil already in hand. “Organize all my thoughts and maybe it’ll make sense. What information do I have?”

  1. Danny was in an accident involving the ghost portal and it changed him.
  2. Danny was vehemently against their parents’ anti ghost genocide plan
  3. The ghost boy she’d seen at school the other day was clearly the one that had attacked the hornet thing when it attacked her
  4. Danny had all the access to the Fenton Armory as she did with their porta pockets, which was effectively _full_ access.
  5. Danny was too smart to give any unknown entity their only model of plasma rifle
  6. Danny had directed Sydney Poindexter of all people to _her_
  7. Sydney knew Danny on a personal level that he wasn’t willing to fully disclose to her.
  8. Sydney had called Danny half-human and Danny hadn’t corrected him, nor had Tucker nor Sam.
  9. Jazz saw the mystery ghost boy transform in a flash of light into her brother, who proceeded to hug her and act much the same he had since the portal accident.



Her conclusion? Danny had died in the portal when it turned on, and now he was a ghost, fighting off ghost robots and giant bugs with their parents’ weaponry. Sam and Tucker knew about it, and he had befriended at least one ghost. This was, of course, the most ridiculous thought to cross Jasmine Dana Fenton’s mind in her entire life. But then, her parents had opened a portal to the afterlife and she’d just been attacked by a giant glowing green hornet.

“Ok, Danny is a ghost. He didn’t  _ tell _ me that, but for obvious reasons,” she muttered to herself. “That must be what he was going to tell Mom and Dad before and now he doesn’t have the courage to try again. Oh  _ god _ Danny  _ died. _ ” Jazz picked up Bearbert Einstein and hugged him close, deciding right then that she was going to hug Danny a lot more from now on. Just to make sure he was still there. That was a silly thought, but she  _ needed _ to be sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that sure was a chapter huh? I dearly hope, readers, that you enjoyed the show and if you did please leave a comment and maybe share this on tumblr or twitter or something. I'm GuardianRex on tumblr too so if you wanna yell in my inbox or tag me in something, feel free to! We're approaching the home stretch, pals, the point before I do a massively ridiculous change between certain fics on this site. have a wonderful daaaaay


	5. Hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say no plan survives contact with the enemy. Danny wishes they were wrong about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS WEDNESDAY MY DUDES! AAAAAAAAAAAAA  
> any inconsistencies with the previous parts of the story are me thinking up better versions of the first chunk of the story and referencing That before I go back to edit it in. Apologies for the confusion this will likely bring.

Dash Baxter was a conflicted person right now. He’d been feeling off practically all school year, and Valerie, Star, and Paulina were about ready to tell him to fuck off while they went and did their own awesome friend stuff. If he was pressed to think about it hard, he would say that it started when Manson had gotten the school to change the menu for a whole ass week. Now, Dash typically cooked or baked his own food anyway, so it was hardly something that sucked for him but plenty of his teammates bought lunch at school and they weren’t weird vegans like Manson! He’d gone up to her to give her a piece of his mind about all of that shit since he couldn’t exactly go yell at a teacher, and maybe he shouldn’t have yelled but he was angry and his voice got louder when he was mad.

Then Fenton got between them like Dash was gonna throw hands with Manson or something. Don’t get him wrong, he knows how dangerous a girl can be – Valerie would never have been friends with him if he didn’t respect how dangerous a girl like her could be – but his father had raised him to never lay hands on a woman. And besides, Dash wasn’t feeling violent! Or, at least, he didn’t think he had been.

Except that when Fenton got between them, Dash had been pissed. He’d gone from mad to unseeing rage and stuffed one of the dumb mudpies in Fenton’s face, and then Fenton started throwin the garbage, and then a food fight happened. Now, some people might think that his year was off because of the fire that happened after this food fight, but it was actually the start of it. Dash Baxter only threw hands when someone was threatening his friends, not for getting between him and someone else. Not for nothing. It was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever done in his life and he felt horrible about it afterward but he couldn’t think of what had gotten into him.

Worse still was when it kept happening. Mikey and Lester were rambling kinda loudly about some stupid card game and Dash got annoyed, went over to ask them to quiet down. Then there was this weird this rush of some sorta warm slimy something down his spine that was there and gone in a flash, and he was barking at the two of them, “Shut the hell up or else I’ll make you.” He almost didn’t realize he’d said that but then Kwan elbowed him hard in the ribs and Dash winced, running a hand through his hair. “God, did I say that? Shit, sorry dudes I didn’t mean that!”

Except… he did. Dash was the one who said it, right? And he said it practically automatically, without even thinking it. Was that who he was becoming? Was he turning into his grandfather? Kwan promised him he wasn’t, Vincent said he wouldn’t let Dash turn into his gramps, but then Dash was shoving scrawnier kids into the lockers out of his way, and he’d been about to mouth off to Fenton for no freakin reason other than he was there and his freaky mad scientist parents had to be the ones to put that green fire and stuff. Then a god damn monster popped out of Fenton’s locker, attacked Foley, and Dash was out of there. 

Right after the fire the school had everyone set up meetings with the counselor, Dr. Spectra, and Dash went too, just like everyone. She even gave him a journal to write his feelings down in so he could work out what he was feeling and put it in words at his own pace. He didn’t like how she was implying that he couldn’t put his feelings into words at the same speed as everyone else, but if she was then hey, she wasn’t… she wasn’t  _ wrong _ . And after writing it all down in that black journal, Dash came to a bit of a conclusion: Fenton was at the center of all of this.

Danny Fenton was a bit of a freak already, his eyes glowed when he was pissy even back in 6th grade and Dash knew it had to be because his parents were mad fucking scientists and either they experimented on their kids or the radiation in their house had gotten to em. And now that freakiness was popping up and destroying the whole damn school! Hell, Dash was pretty sure one of the Fentons’ damn ghosts had stuffed a buncha frogs down his pants the other day, cause he heard laughter when he ran away. But that had  _ nothing _ on how  _ furious _ Dash had been when Fenton called him  **stupid** .

Dash wasn’t fucking  **dumb** he was a little  **slow** but so were plenty kids! Nerds and geeks like Fenton and Mikey and Josh all thought they were so fucking smart that they could get away with calling anyone else  **stupid** ? Dash had been planning on educating Fenton on just how  _ smart _ an idea that was. Then Falluka yelled at him and Kwan… God, Kwan looked so fucking  _ disappointed _ in him.

So Dash was feeling a little conflicted and a lot shitty when Danny Motherfucking Fenton walked up to him in his star trek hoodie and said, “Dash I need your help.”

“Oh yeah?” Dash snorted and sneered at the smaller boy. “Why should I help?”

“You remember the monster thing that nearly tore off Tucker’s leg?” Dash paled a bit and nodded. “Something worse is lurking in the school. Something  _ smart. _ We need your help to expose it before we can get rid of it.”

“So you want me to put my ass on the line and risk getting mauled because your freaky monster is out here lookin to eat someone?” Dash scoffed and turned away. “I ain’t stupid, Fentina, no matter what you think.”

There was a  _ growl _ behind him and the hairs on Dash’s neck rose up. He tensed and damn near sprinted when he remembered that Fenton was packing heat. Maybe he  _ was _ stupid. But then Fenton sighed and the lights flickered. “Dash, did you notice that you’ve become more and more of a jerk lately? You used to be the awesome jock who could run faster than everyone but Valerie and you made cookies for the whole class.

“Now you insult everyone at every turn and you tried to beat me up for telling you off. Doesn’t that feel  _ wrong _ to you? I know nobody wants to believe my parents about the ghosts but you saw the monster, you saw Tucker bleeding and this is  _ real _ Dash. And what do ghosts do in movies?”

“You sayin I’m possessed, Fenton?” His voice was shakier than he wanted it but it made… well sense was the wrong word but it lined up. “Wouldn’t I blackout or somethin?”

“Not necessarily. Some ghosts are smart n subtle and they can make you do things, feel things enough times while you’re awake that it’s habit-forming. My friend Sydney Poindexter can show you.”

Dread hit Dash like a tidal wave and he turned to bolt. Then he was  **_cold_ ** and he relaxed all over, went deathly calm. He was submerged in the utmost chill vibes. Then he was utterly terrified, so much so he almost needed a change of pants. But then he was over the moon happy, frothing at the mouth  **pissed** and then calm again.

The heat slowly returned to Dash’s bones as the back of something-  _ someone _ filled his vision. Then he was looking at the bucktoothed, weak chinned weird movie hologram ghost of - if Fenton was to be believed -  _ Sydney fucking Poindexter _ . “You see, Dash,” Fenton said while Dash stared at Poindexter with a very real sense of dread and awareness that someone who could fly could catch him faster than he could run, “if Sydney here were to possess you from time to time and adjust your mood and behavior just a little bit each time, especially over the few months we’ve been in school, you’d start doing everything he made you do on your own. You wouldn’t notice it either, it’d feel like your own feelings.” Dash finally looked at Fenton. “Got the picture, Dash?”

“... I thought your family hunted ghosts down?” Dash’s voice was as small as he felt. Because of that, he nodded quickly when he realized he’d been asked a question. “Y-yeah, I get the picture. I’ve been. I’ve been fucking  _ possessed. _ ” Icy hot fury and horror filled him up to the brim and Dash shook, fists clenching and unclenching. “I’m being haunted by someone and they’re fuckin with what kinda person I am. But who the hell would do that?”

“Dash, Sydney is going to hide so that Ishiyama doesn’t turn on the security system and shoot holes through him - and he’s a good person, Dash, trust me.”  _ Yeah, sure he is. _ “And we’re gonna go to the principal and have her call a very specific person to the front office. I need you and I to be hiding right next to the door to the hall, because when he sees you, he’ll know what’s happening.” Fenton reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out- ok, he really did have bottomless pockets because no way he kept a gun  _ and _ a belt in there. He handed it to Dash who held it in his hands, feeling a bit numb. “Put that on. It’ll give a nasty shock to any hostile ghost that touches you.”

“So that he can’t possess me again, right?” Fenton nodded and Dash was putting the belt on before he even knew it. It clicked into place and he felt a warm  _ buzz _ rush through him. “Fuck, thanks Fenton. Danny. Do we uh. Do we go now?”

“Dash you’re heading to practice,” Fe-Danny said, and Dash sighed and slumped against a locker. “Don’t worry though, we have a plan.”

“Right. A plan.” Dash took a deep breath and nodded. He wanted to get whatever ghost asshole had been messing him up, making him into a total asshole, right the fuck then. But Fenton was the nerd with the sci-fi gun and a ghost friend here, not Dash. And he wasn’t all that keen on being near Poindexter of all dead people, so he nodded again and half turned. “...This… after this ghost dude is dealt with, I’ll… I’ll go back to normal, right?”

“That’ll take some effort on your part, Dash. Do you  _ want _ to go back to normal?” Dash whirled around to tell Fenton  _ of course he did _ but he was just gone.

Dash scoffed and shook his head, walking to practice. “Got his boyfriend’s dramatics.”

* * *

It was legitimately the simplest of plans. Danny had come up with it so it was very simple and easy to understand. Danny and Dash headed into Ishiyama’s office at lunch, Sydney waited just outside of Danny’s own sensing range for him - which had gotten alarmingly smaller since his resurrection - and when Dash identified Bertrand as his late grandfather, Danny, Sam and Tucker would turn him into a pile of green sludge, then go after Spectra after making the case that she was also something inhuman disguising herself to feed off of the students. Simple.

Easy to understand didn’t mean easy to execute. When Danny Fenton of all people approached Ishiyama and said something was up, with Dash Baxter backing him up, she called up Bertrand Baxter to her office. Dash looked absolutely floored by that revelation though and turned on Danny immediately. “Are you saying my fucking  _ grandpa _ is the one who’s been haunting me?”

“I really hope you’re not like, attached to him or anything.”

“Oh no, he was  _ awful _ but dude, you  _ knew? _ ” Danny sighed and nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He could’ve possessed you in the shower when you took off the belt and figured out how much we know.” Danny looked to Ishiyama, who had gone pale and was typing furiously at her laptop. Danny, however, headed to the door to the hallway and crouched down, reaching into his jacket. Dash was still standing in the doorway to the principal’s office, however, and so when Bertrand came in and Danny got to see his disguise for the first time - short, grey slacks with dress shoes and a red dress shirt with a suit jacket and bowtie. His hair was grey and his eyes were green and he looked like a stereotypical rich white guy, reminding Danny how wealthy Dash actually was - Bertrand stopped and stared at Dash for three seconds.

“Oh.  **you.** Wonderful to see you again you sissy ass brute, have you been sewing anymore wittle teddybears for yourself or are your sausage fingers too big for that?” Oh, Danny  _ hated _ that tone. So, he pulled out his rifle, aimed it at Bertrand’s face, and smirked.

“Wow, you looked slimy in life too, huh?” Danny got to see wide green eyes filled with shock and terror before he squeezed the trigger on his gun and Bertrand became a green splat on the wall that Danny would have to clean up later.

“You didn’t even leave a little bit of ass for me to kick?” Sam groaned as she stood up from behind the wait desk, patting the shaking attendant’s back while she got closer. In her hands was a thin metal tube with the Fenton Logo on it and a button, looking to any trained eye like a typical collapsible bo staff. “I got this whole new weapon from your mom and everything.”

“Please don’t say that in front of the principal - and hey, we’ve got more ass to kick.” Danny grinned, maybe a bit wider than humanly reasonable, and turned to Ishiyama. “I’d like to make a complaint about Bertrand’s boss.”

“You can make that complaint to her right here in person,  _ darling. _ ” Danny spun to look at the source of the predatory purr that was damn near right in his ear. Red suit, red hair done up in ridiculous horns, and eyes that were slowly shifting from green to yellow to orange. “I don’t believe we’ve met yet, Mr. Fenton, but it’ll be my  _ pleasure _ to give yourself and your friends a session. Free of charge.”

“Hm, I hear you, Penny, I do. Counterpoint.” Danny grinned as Sam hit the button and swung her now humming staff - the Fenton Anti Creep Stick™ - at Spectra’s face and watched as it sailed through the air where Spectra had been. The creature named Penelope had twisted back and around fluid as water to avoid the strike and spun around, kicking Sam in the gut and knocking her into the reception desk. Danny snarled and raised his rifle, managing to shoot Spectra in the shoulder.

Spectra flicked the ashes from her shoulder where her suit and ‘skin’ had been burned - though her skin looked more like it’d suffered a fading sunburn than it did a glob of ionized ectoplasmic plasma - and backhanded a shocked Danny. He raised his arms in time to block the nails that were now claws with his jacket, but these sleeves were cotton and simply tore open while he was flung back as well. “Oh Danny, honey, you should really do your research more. I’m not a  _ ghost _ .” Darkness flooded the room and they - Danny, Sam, Tucker, Dash - were in what Danny assumed to be her office. He hissed and pulled out the Peeler, but that was smacked out of his hands and clattered loudly to the floor.

The others disappeared in a cloud of smoke, which the room was steadily becoming. “Come now, Danny, none of  _ that. _ We’re here to talk, after all. About you, before you ask. After all, you have quite a few pressing anxieties to address, don’t you?” A clipboard appeared in her hands from the smoke all around them and she read over it while Danny reached for the bonds to his friends. The threads were… slack, dim, quieter than they should be.

“Daniel James Fenton, your sister had an appointment set up with me for you, worried unlike every other child here you weren’t getting enough attention. But of course, someone like you can never get enough attention.”

“When I get my hands on you I-”

“Ah, that testosterone you keep shooting up with really is making you more aggressive, isn’t it?” Danny snarled at her and she tutted at him, walking slowly around her desk. “Or is that the ectoplasm running through your veins causing you to act out violently on mere speculations and possibilities from what’s more than likely just a bad dream from your little friend. That’s what it does, after all. Corrupt the mind and soul. Oh, but of course you know that, don’t you?

“Your parents have all the science on ghosts at their fingertips and surely you’re smart enough to read up on it. Oh,” she covered her mouth and sucked on her teeth, looking all the world like she’d just noticed something inconsiderate coming out of her vile mouth before vanishing into the darkness. “Oh, well I suppose you could read it but it wouldn’t stick, would it? The dead can’t learn anything new, after all, you’re just an echo of who you were before.”

“Bias and prejudice aren’t science!” Danny raised his rifle again, energy racing to his eyes as he searched the shadows desperately. The light rose to his call, filled him untethered him from the Earth, but what he Saw felt  **wrong** . Even the lies the eyes tell him are truer than what was around him and he knew that but he couldn’t see through the smoke. “Sam and Tucker have hammered that into me plenty well enough by now to cut through bullshit like that! And really, I liked your office better after that flubber wannabe and I trashed it.”

A flash of red suit came into view and Danny pulled the trigger, but Spectra was faster than the green hot plasma, and claws swatted his weapon away while slashing at his chest. Thank Tucker for leather jackets and all the protection they offered but now Danny was on his back, the ground and somehow the kind of uncomfortable chair that all schools used to punish the students for the simple crime of being there.

“Ah yes, Sam the rich goth girl who befriended you as soon as she heard that you were the son of the town crazies. The one who warned you away from coming out to your parents so they could help you become normal again - or as close as someone like You can get.” She laughed, the sound of ice spilling down a glacier into the cold dark waters below, and it echoed around him like the chill of a winter night. “Don’t you know she’s only friends with you because you’re ‘unique’? Because you’re a  **freak** ? Don’t you know, oh so darling Danny, that as soon if you were able to get rid of all this craziness and live a peaceful life, she’d grow bored with you and leave?”

“You don’t know a damn thing about Sam, she’s not like that!” Danny rolled out of the chair and got to his feet, every movement like he was covered in sandbags and the smokey shadows every two feet away seemed to swallow up his voice, growing darker and pressing closer like a rolling tide. Light curled into a ball in his palm, and he hurled it where Spectra was, but the shadows  _ ate _ his light and left barely a foot in any direction to move.

“Oh and the year you’ve known her has revealed everything to you, hm? Well, I suppose when someone  **murders** you with peer pressure and you stick around them it’s clear how pathetically desperate for another friend you are. After all, the only other one you have is your oh so precious  _ Tucker _ . Precious, pragmatic Tucker who cheered you on to go to your parents about all this, more than ok with you getting dissected for it. After all, he’s a smart boy and you can’t have fooled  _ him _ as well as you fooled yourself into thinking you’re the same Danny Fenton he knew before you died.”

Spectra laughed again, claws digging into his shoulders, and anger, resentment, and fury rang through his soul, the chime of a burning bell. Light struck Spectra in the face, the Fomorian’s cackles finally cut off with a shriek of pain as she stumbled back and the choking darkness ebbed a foot away again. Danny snarled at her, spying the empty hollowness where his light had sheared off the false skin on her face, another ball of orange-silver light crackling at his fingertips.

“You keep Tucker’s name out of your filthy lying mouth! He would never hurt me!”

“He sure did take his time making you any sort of protection though, and once he got your parents to give him something that made his very touch a taser’s spark to your skin he wasn’t in any rush to modify it for your safety. Almost like he didn’t want you able to touch him, or he didn’t feel like making you something genuinely substantial as protection - after all, he finally got another one working and where did  _ that _ end up? On Dash.” Danny stepped back when the shadows closed around Spectra once again, glaring into the dark of her office and kicking the desk to the wall for room. It didn’t even clatter against the wall when it vanished from his sight and he couldn’t tell if that was because there  _ was no wall _ or if he was simply losing his stars forsaken mind.

“Modifying the Spector Deflector took time, you slippery little oil stain, now come out where I can punch you.”

“It hardly took time for your parents to make it, did it? And  _ oh _ your parents.” She purred, voice taking on a cloyingly sweet tone and Danny shuddered at the cold against his skin, the smoke curling against his jacket and following him as he flew up to the ceiling to make some room. Now, though, it looked like he was trapped in the abyss with no floor, no ceiling, no way anywhere and if he ever stopped flying he would  _ fall and fall and fall and there was no end to this darkness, no stars to sing to him and comfort him and it was like the times before his very first self _ .

“We can’t forget the source of all this anguish can we? Those darn parents of yours that put ghost hunting and science and your better sibling before you the whole of our life and even your afterlife! Oh, even you know now that normal old human authorities would clutch their pearls and steal you away to a safer place to live than with them. How many times have you had artificial ectoplasm in your food, either poisoning you or bringing it to life for you all to fend off? How many times have they barged into your room with no concern for your privacy and dragged you away to do work for them like an intern? How many times have you nearly died because dear old Dr. and Dr. Fenton couldn’t be bothered to make their home a safe place for a child?”

Danny curled up into a ball then, clutching at his head and closing his eyes. The star song that rang through his body and warmed his bones when he was a ghost grew dimmer and darker and colder with each word out of the dark and past the echoes it took a moment to realize that whining sound was coming from him. “Shut up! Shut up shut up, you don’t- so they’re a little clumsy! No one can be the best parents ever, and they love us! They love me!” 

“Is that why they killed you?” That laughter felt like a slap to the face and Danny slipped into intangibility, only to fall from the air as his power left him, and he landed on the cold hard ground, alone and shaking. “Your father so careless with the most outrageously dangerous things that he left a doorway to the land of the dead plugged in even with the door to the lab still open. Your mother, so stubborn, so sure of herself, would never listen to your advice on how to simply not mutate the food that her family eats let alone listen about how ghosts actually work from  _ you _ . Daddy dearest doesn’t truly care what you  _ want _ to be, he knows that you’re not smart enough to become an astronaut, skilled enough to live off your art alone, and that all you really have to fall back on is the family business of ghost hunting, so why shouldn’t he talk over you about it all? Your own precious Mommy didn’t have an answer for you as to what she’d do if she  _ knew _ you were a ghost.

“Oh, your parents are just so awful that they went and let you die, and you don’t want to face the truth of it? Is it because you’re afraid that you’re just like them, keeping Agatha locked up in that soup can for a whole weekend before you let her out, turning Hunter into a splatter on the ground, shooting my dearest little assistant because he’s a ghost?  _ Or _ is it because you know, deep down, that what they would do as soon as they knew you’re not human is strap you down and cut you up to see what you actually are. You don’t even know, after all!”

His light was a pinprick in the distance, practically gone and with it the gossamer strings that bound him to his friends and let him know he wasn’t alone. They were gone because he  _ was _ alone, wasn’t he? How could he not be, with whatever the hell he was? There wasn’t a thing out there like him, and if the dark pressing in on him like oil choked sea water swallowed him up then no one would truly understand what was lost. Would they even feel they lost something at all?

“Are you a ghost pretending to be human again? Or are you a creepy little boy with creepy little powers? A changeling left behind by a faerie through that portal, or some kind of curse? Oh, who cares what you are? Not a boy, not a ghost, not a fae or jinni or beast of this earth! Who could possibly care for a thing - a  **_mistake_ ** like little Danny Fenton? Or should I say, C-”

**Orange, fury, protect, love, wrath, HOW DARE SHE** blazed down the bond between Danny and Jazz and filled him with a warmth he’d near forgotten existed. Green light cut through the darkness and engulfed Spectra, peeling away her suit and her skin and the darkness that made her up like one might an onion or potato. “ **How dare you, you worthless parasite? How dare you lay a single clawed hand on my baby brother while you sit here, curled up in your precious darkness to hide from the truth that would burn away your empty, worthless lies?”** Danny had never heard Jazz so angry, had never seen such fire in her aura and it kindled that spark inside of him that was growing oh so distant. “Sydney?”

Danny had never loved the color green so much before he saw peridot flames leap from Sydney’s hands and engulf the room, before sweeping in to swallow Spectra up in a pile of burning  _ rot _ . They were back in Ishiyama’s office and the waiting room before it, Tucker and Sam and Dash all pale and shaking like they were freezing, but the heat of Sydney’s flames and the rage in his screams were like a camp fire in the cold woods. When Danny turned to see Jazz she was practically a chrome and green knight, wearing armor he’d never seen before and brandishing the Peeler at Spectra like a shotgun at a mugger. “I can’t believe I thought someone so pathetic they had to pick at the insecurities of literal children for a misery meal would do anything to help my brother.” She squeezed the trigger and held it until even Spectra’s shrieks of agony were nothing more than echoes in the room.

Jazz turned to Danny and before she was even fully out of the armor he had his arms wrapped around her, clinging tight to the only person that felt well and truly real at the moment. She hugged him back just as fast and relief slammed into the horror and misery and blended with the vindication until he couldn’t tell what feeling it was that blurred his vision and made his face wet with tears, but when Jazz ran a hand down his back he shook with the force of his sobs. Tucker and Sam put hands on his shoulders and the threads between them were a sickly puce and bloody red that had him dragging them both into the hug with him. They stood there, leaning on each other in the office and crying, and some part of Danny knew that they were going to be alright.

They had each other, and nothing could get to them when they were with each other, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIGHT so this happened. I dearly hope you enjoyed it, toss a comment in the comment section if you did, and please spread this to your friends or your tumblr or what have you. have an awesome day!

**Author's Note:**

> Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Sacrifices~? put them all down below! have a wonderful life, see you next chapter!


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